


Take Me Back to The Start

by jonesyslug



Category: Cobra Kai (Web Series), Karate Kid (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, M/M, Only because i habent finished season 1 yet and i couldn't hold my horses, Slow Burn, plus i dont feel like having to keep up with canon tbh
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:09:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27894358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonesyslug/pseuds/jonesyslug
Summary: Johnny and Daniel keep running into each other and there's a nagging undercurrent they both separately remember from previous interactions. Both of them wildly wondering if the other can sense it or feels it. Both of them talking themselves out of believing it.California is a big place, they don't think they should be running into each other this often, but lately it seems like they're seeing each other everywhere.
Relationships: Daniel LaRusso/Johnny Lawrence
Comments: 21
Kudos: 42





	1. Even If It Takes A Lifetime

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are  
> In a room full of strangers  
> Standing in the dark  
> Where your eyes couldn't see me  
> Well I had to follow you  
> Though you did not want me to 
> 
> Nights on Broadway - Bee Gees

Daniel steps out of the school auditorium and into the night air, taking a deep breath. Kyler hadn't even shown up to the function. He feels good about that. Sam had been smiling, laughing, even, with the kids she was talking to. 

The Cobra Kai kids… he has to roll his eyes at that, but he isn’t going to let it bother him. 

Or, he thinks he isn't, until he sees a familiar form sitting at one of the picnic tables in the courtyard. 

"Johhny?" He asks, stepping around to see. 

"LaRusso. The fuck are you doing here?" 

"I'm chaperoning my daughter's dance, haven't we been over thi- why are  _ you _ here?" 

"Some of my kids can't drive so I'm giving them a lift." He says, with a scoff. 

Daniel is about to ask what he means, and remembers:  _ his students.  _

"Ah, well. That's nice of you." Daniel says, kicking at the dirt a bit. 

"Don't sound so surprised." Johnny mutters, pulling a beer out of his pocket. He snaps the cap off with the edge of the table. 

Daniel scrunches up his face, about to say something, when Johnny interrupts him. 

"What?  _ What?  _ I'm a fucking adult, alright?" 

"School grounds?" Daniel tries. 

"What are you, a fucking cop? Get off my dick and go make sure the kids are keeping their hands to themselves." Johnny says, pointing his thumb over his shoulder. 

"They're  _ fine."  _ Daniel says, with exasperation. 

Johnny grunts in a half agreement. 

"What you'd rather be out here watching me? Can't even leave me be at a fucking school dance all these years later?" 

Daniel feels his stomach twist. He clears his throat, and sputters a few times before he begins talking. 

"Our rivalry is a matter of circumstance." Daniel says, looking at Johnny. Curiosity is itching up his spine, he's not sure why he's even talking. "So what… we liked the same girl in high school? That's bullshit. That-" 

Daniel wants to know suddenly why he is the one who sounds like he's apologizing. Things he had nightmares about for years flash though his mind. Johnny nearly killed him. He didn't owe him comfort. 

And then there was that look on Johnny's face. Miserable, sunken, and angry. 

"I...I was trained in a Cobra Kai dojo, too. I guess I was a Cobra Kai." Daniel says, looking down at his hand and flexing his fist. 

Johnny takes a long sip from his beer. "No, you weren't. If you were really Cobra Kai, it wouldn't be past tense. Cobra Kai n-" 

"Never dies. I know." Daniel cut him off. "But I wore that snake on my back. I did- I was-" Daniel shook his head. He didn't need to go reliving that, either. 

"I'm just offering you an olive branch." He says, with a sigh. "It'd be nice to call truce. Not to tense up every time I see you." 

Johnny glances up at him, absolutely stricken by his words. "After all this shit…  _ you're _ afraid of  _ me _ ?" He asks, with bitter disbelief.

Daniel looks away, ashamed. He knows what he's done. That he hasn't been the bigger man about this. Hasn't even been a  _ good  _ man about this, just acting on impulses of fear and revenge and saying it was all for the greater good. The higher purpose. Cut off the head of the snake that bit him so many times to protect his kids, to protect kids like him.

And then he saw the kids in Johnny's dojo. They protected each other, his own daughter, even. Those kids were like him, like he had been. Suddenly, he realizes what that makes him. Now Johnny is with the down on their luck kids from Reseda, and he is in The Hills. 

He sits down on the bench across from Johnny. 

"Yeah." He whispers. 

"Yeah? And your win was a fluke. A cheat. You're not a karate champion. You're just a car salesman." Johnny says, staring at Daniel with a dark expression. 

"Right." Daniel says, rolling his eyes and sighing. "I forgot I'm the bad guy. Forgot that getting the shit beaten out of me by you and four of your friends was-"

"You started that with the hose shit!" 

Daniel looked at him. "And you think beating me until I was unconscious is even payback?"

Johnny looks away, and there's a little shame on his face. Something Daniel didn't expect. 

"I was just a stupid kid." 

"So was I." Daniel replies, softly, the olive branch being extended again. 

Daniel swallows hard. "I over reacted to the return of Cobra Kai, but you have to understand… ever since I moved to California, those words have been nothing but trouble for me." 

Johnny takes another sip from his beer. "That was the last time anything was going right for me. Before you moved here. Before the fucking tournament." 

"You can't live in the past." 

Johnny's eyes light up with an angry fire. "Maybe  _ you  _ can't! But things turned out a hell of a lot different for you than they did for me. You with your house and your business. Marriage and 2.5 kids. Well, your divorce. But, you know what? Still, still doing better than me… Fuck off, LaRusso. I got exactly what you wanted me to get back in high school, and now that I'm scraping something together and I have a purpose again, you can't fucking stand it." 

  
  


Johnny lets an angry breath out through his nose. "You don't want to forgive me, you want me to stop fighting for something better so I go back to being a little joke you can trot around in front of your friends when your God damn entitled bitch princess daughter and her bitch princess friends ram into  _ my  _ car." 

"Johnny…" 

"No, acting all happy to see me like we're old friends when I know you were just glad to see my life was in the shitter." 

"That's not what happened, Johnny. A-and don't call my daughter a bitch!" 

"What was it, then, huh? You sure seemed amused to hell and back." 

Daniel shrugs. "I was… I was actually happy to see you." 

Johnny gives him an expression so defined that Daniel can hear him yell  _ 'what the fuck?'  _ without him having to open his mouth. 

"I know, okay?" Daniel says, rolling his eyes. "But we're adults now and I thought, you know, that it was good to see you being… like, a real person." 

"The hell does that mean?" Johnny asks, sitting his beer down with a loud thud. 

Daniel looks at the stout, brown bottle and frowns, thinking he really should intervene if Johnny's job tonight really is to drive kids home. He ignores it for the moment, but he will bring it up again, that much he knows. 

"Because in my mind," Daniel says, starting to talk with his hands like he always does when he's emotional, "you were always just sitting up in there as this little avatar of wrath. Like I was waiting all the time for you to round a corner on the street, see me, and kick me in the stomach." Daniel says, with a small laugh of disbelief. "Which was stupid, obviously. Or it seemed like it was stupid until Cobra Kai came back. Then I felt a little vindicated in that line of thought." 

"Starting my dojo had nothing to do with you, don't fucking flatter yourself." Johnny snarls, surprised at how the anger inside him made the half lie sound like the truth. 

Daniel holds his hands up defensively. "Alright, I'll give you that one." 

He's still smiling gently. Johnny glares back. 

"I guess I did take it kind of personally." 

"You got my rent hiked." Johnny practically spits. 

Daniel looks down at his shoes. "That was shitty. That was- So can we just agree we've both done shitty stuff?" 

Johnny shrugs and picks up his beer, finishing it. "You said it yourself, I was a kid when I did  _ my  _ shitty stuff. You're a full grown adult, dumbass." 

Daniel closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose, breathing out. "So, no truce?" He asks. His hand falls and he looks up at Johnny from under his lashes. 

Johnny nearly gags, because his stomach lurches so violently. 

_ Ah, there's  _ that  _ again.  _

He can't deny that was part of the driving force of his anger as a teenager. The way Daniel could put a little stranglehold on his heart with his dumb Jersey accent and his dark eyes. 

Johnny thought it was a pity he didn't have such a thick accent anymore. 

And then it struck him how much time has stretched out. That he'd just been staring at Daniel. Daniel was staring back. 

"Whatever. Truce." Johnny says. 

As Daniel holds his hand out to shake on it, Johnny gets up from his seat and slowly starts to wander towards the parking lot. He's muttering something about  _ another beer _ , so Daniel gets up and grabs him by the shoulder, spinning him around. 

"Hey, you're driving kids home tonight, you can't be drinking." 

_ Oh, so the accent comes back when he's mad.  _

Johnny stares at him, his eyes wide and shocked that Daniel would grab him like that, and Daniel sees under the flood light that Johnny's face is pink. 

His mind flips through a few options, but he hasn't had enough to drink, and it wasn't cold enough, so then what was Johnny all flushed for? 

The light is catching in Johnny's hair and Daniel is suddenly too aware that he's touching Johnny. 

_ Oh, so there's  _ that  _ again.  _

The annoying, undeniable attractiveness possessed by Johnny Lawrence. Something that had messed with his self esteem in so many ways as a teenager, the main one being regret that he was on his bad side from the jump. 

"Johnny." Daniel says, taking his hand off Johnny's shoulder and shoving it into his jacket pocket. "No more drinks tonight. At least until you get home, okay?" 

Johnny is so angry with himself that he thinks he might combust. He knows his face is flushed and the only thing keeping him from outright sprinting away was watching the way Daniel's eyes had softened and he'd started to go pink in the cheeks as well. 

Maybe he could see straight through Johnny and he was just embarrassed for him. That sounded about right. 

"Yeah whatever." Johnny mutters, backing out of the light. 

Daniel's voice had dropped into something so soft, right after he'd been nagging him, and it's pulling on something inside him that he can't figure out. 

Daniel is still staring at him. Johnny's jaw clenches.

Daniel steps towards him. Johnny steps back again. 

"Are you scared of me?" Daniel asks. He sounds strangely hurt, where Johnny thinks he would have been gloating. 

"N-no. Fucking hell- why would I be scared of  _ you?"  _

_ I'm not scared of you, I'm scared of myself.  _

"That's what I was going to ask." Daniel takes two steps forward and this time, Johnny plants his feet. Having LaRusso think he's some kind of tail-between-his-legs coward was possibly worse than the truth. 

Possibly. 

Daniel's disbelief is so profound that he's sure it's having physical effects on the atmosphere. Everything feels too light, but his movements seem so slow. He is definitely not in control of them, for one, because his hand is reaching up. Johnny can't be in control of his own movements either, because he's not flinching away or going on the offensive. They're both suspended there, above their bodies, waiting to see what happens. 

When Daniel's hand comes to rest on Johnny's neck, their lips meet a moment later, and everything comes crashing back down. 

It has been such a small kiss. So gentle and chaste, and yet it had both men struggling not to run from each other. Daniel steps back and takes his hand off Johnny's neck like he's been burned, like Johnny is finally starting to combust. 

Johnny's eyes close and he shakes his head. 

"Why did you do that?" He whispers. He sounds defeated. 

Daniel swallows hard. "I don't… I don't know." 

Johnny looks back up at him to see if this is where the punchline hits. Daniel looks completely lost. 

Johnny's stomach sinks. Daniel is lonely, Daniel sees right through him, Daniel  _ pities _ him. That's what it was. 

Anger is rising up in him again. "Well you can keep your fucking lips to yourself, LaRusso. I don't need that." Johnny shakes his head. "I'm not gonna bother you but," Johnny's fists clench. "You can keep your fucking olive branch." 

Johnny stomps away, back to his car, and Daniel stands exactly where he is, in a haze of confusion, until the dance is over, and the kids start to trickle out the doors. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man I'm sorry I'm ignoring so much canon of the show for this but I just wanted to have my own little LawRusso sandbox to play in 
> 
> Chapter song: Nights on Broadway


	2. I Am Listening to Hear Where You Are

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Catching signals that sound in the dark 
> 
> \- Two Headed Boy, Neutral Milk Hotel

After the winter dance, the kiss played in Johnny's head every night as he tried to sleep. It had only been a few weeks since then, but he'd had fleeting thoughts of lobotomizing himself if it would make him stop thinking about  _ Daniel LaRusso.  _

Tonight is no exception. He tosses and turns like he's having nightmares, when really, he's awake and his mind is daring him to imagine more. 

He thinks about how Daniel's hands, his lips, they were soft like a chick's. 

_ He must have some kind of fruity moisturizing routine.  _

Johnny thinks he could live with himself if it was just a clash of confused senses, a soft touch and a gentle kiss feeling good. Those things were  _ supposed _ to feel good. 

No, it's not remembering the kiss that's tearing him apart. Hell, it's not even really the fact that it was with a man. It's the fact that it was with LaRusso.  _ It's the fact that he wants to do it again.  _

He's been lucky enough to turn on the charm and pick up a few barflies over the past few weeks. Just a couple, but enough that if he was just lonely, he should have been sated, for the moment. It had been easily done in the past. 

But he was not lonely for general touch and closeness. He was lonely because he  _ wanted.  _

And what he wanted was for Daniel to touch him again. 

He punches the bed. He's been having dreams about him, even. That hasn't been a problem since high-school. 

_ Of course, he never kissed you in high-school. _

He was still waiting for the sucker punch. The whole reveal that it was all a joke. But the few times he'd even caught a glimpse of LaRusso, the man had given him a look of panic and disappeared. 

So maybe it wasn't a joke. He is starting to believe that, as time passes. Not a joke. A mistake, though? Surely LaRusso saw it that way. 

Johnny rolls over and yells into his pillow. It's not fair that Daniel can make him lose this much sleep. 

It's not fair that Daniel won't touch him again. 

* * *

  
  
  


Daniel lays awake in bed, staring at the ceiling. The house is quiet tonight. His bed feels so big tonight. 

All he's done since the winter dance is chide himself for thinking Johnny wanted anything to do with him, much less… well, what he did, but some things still bother him. 

He'd always been good at reading those situations. The subtle expressions of the face, the look in the eyes, he thought he had a good radar for it. For kissing moments. 

And it sure has fuck had felt like one to  _ him.  _

But bigger than that, Johhny hadn't flinched. Hadn't smacked him away or even backed up. 

Johnny had leaned in. 

That was what bugged him the most. That he had seemingly been on the precipice of figuring out what the hell was going on, but when Johnny asked him why, his lack of an answer turned it all sour. 

_ I need to apologize.  _

He wonders how many times he's going to have that thought before it bugs him into actually doing it. So far, he'd just been ducking away if he caught a glimpse of Johnny and making himself busy somewhere else as fast as he could. 

He doesn't want it to be like that. He wants to tell Johnny why he kissed him. Maybe his brain had been too jumbled at the moment to come up with an answer, but now he can think of a few. The most compelling being, ' _because i wanted to.'_

And the most compelling reason to talk to him being that he wants to again.


End file.
